Keeping British metal in arenas seems to be more a case of making a statement for Bullet for My Valentine than a necessity. The Bridgend quartet's last UK tour visited many of the biggest venues in the land yet struggled to half-fill some. New album Temper Temper doesn't appear to have improved matters much – the Hydro is reduced to little more than a sparsely filled standing section tonight.

But guitarist and lead vocalist Matthew Tuck plays to row Z even if there's nobody sitting there – legs splayed wide, flying-V guitar down about his knees, jets of flame and fireworks spitting all around him. "Get those fuckin' horns in the air," he demands, cliche not being a word in these Welshmen's lexicon.

The belief among some metal fans that Bullet aren't a serious band hasn't stopped them selling more than 3m albums worldwide, with a mix-and-match of Metallica's doomy riffing, Iron Maiden's soaring choruses and Slayer's deathly snarling. During Scream Aim Fire, not for the last time this evening, a swirling cauldron of dozens of moshing and slam-dancing young men part the crowd to knock seven bells out of each other, then shake hands afterwards.

If charisma and laughs are in short supply when this band come to town, unintentionally ridiculous posturing most definitely is not. Tuck teases out the stripped-down opening verse of The Last Fight atop a raised podium behind drummer Michael Thomas. Guitarist Michael Paget's gnarly party-piece solo by spotlight isn't nearly as entertaining as some of his angrily orgasmic facial contortions throughout.

At one point the band survey their entire 10-year release history in a breakneck five-song medley, from Hand of Blood through to Riot. But when they encore with a frantic cover of Motörhead's Ace of Spades, it's a sharp reminder of what a bona fide mainstream breakout metal anthem sounds like – and how very far away from writing one Bullet remain.

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